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Upgrading old Windows to GNU/Linux

As a small public service to the numerous non-technical users of ageing equipment I’ve met, since April 2014 my website has included a piece of Javascript which displays the following message at the top of all my pages if it detects an outdated version of Windows:

Connecting old Windows to the Internet is dangerous. Upgrade to Linux urgently!

My site detected you’re using an old Windows computer, and I’m worried about your safety. Microsoft’s security blog said:

When Microsoft releases a security update...criminals will...identify the specific section of code that contains the vulnerability...develop code that will allow them to exploit it on systems that do not have the security update installed on them. They also try to identify whether the vulnerability exists in other products...if a vulnerability is addressed in one version of Windows, researchers investigate whether other versions of Windows have the same vulnerability...the Microsoft Security Response Center...[releases] security updates for all affected products simultaneously...But after April 8, 2014, organizations that continue to run Windows XP won’t have this advantage over attackers any longer. The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares those vulnerabilities. If it does, attackers will attempt to develop exploit code that can take advantage of those vulnerabilities on Windows XP. Since a security update will never become available for Windows XP to address these vulnerabilities, Windows XP will essentially have a “zero day” vulnerability forever.

This also applies to Windows Vista (ended in 2017), to Windows 8 (8.0 ended 2016 and 8.1 ended 2023), to Windows 7 (ended 2023, extended from 2020), and to Windows 2000 and earlier.

What does this mean?

Attackers typically scan across the whole Internet to find computers they can attack. Being ‘insignificant’ does NOT mean you’ll escape. Simply connecting your computer to the Internet will be enough for them to break in and:

Steal your bank details
Steal your contact list, sending malicious material to your friends in *your* name
Use your computer as a springboard to attack another target or conduct other criminal activity, potentially getting *you* blamed for it

What can I do?

My suggestion is GNU/Linux, specifically a “beginner-friendly” Ubuntu-derived version.

If your computer is 64-bit capable and can boot from multi-gigabyte media (DVD or USB, not CD-only), then I suggest Lubuntu’s LTS release.

Back up all your documents before you try migrating your computer to Linux. You can do this while trying Linux *without* installing, but remember it’s slow when not using your hard disk.
If you don’t have a DVD, you can try “UNetbootin” to set up a USB stick, or borrow a USB DVD reader.
If, after installing, a laptop fails to activate its graphical display, try logging in on a console (Ctrl-Alt-F2), do sudo apt install gdm3 lightdm, and select lightdm as the active display manager. For auto-login, create /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf with:

[SeatDefaults]

autologin-user= (your user name)

autologin-user-timeout=0

user-session=Lubuntu

You may now remove the sddm package.

If the display is stuck on 640x480 resolution, from a terminal (or console) type sudo nano /etc/default/grub and uncomment GRUB_TERMINAL=console (after saving you will then need to type sudo update-grub in the terminal).
You can run some legacy Windows programs using WINE (use sudo apt install wine; some Chinese applications additionally require fonts-wqy-microhei), and you can also install hunspell-en-gb for British spelling in LibreOffice (you might later need to purge all libreoffice packages and reinstall if text does not appear on printouts and PDF files). Most other “standard” applications (Firefox etc) are pre-installed, although you might like to browse Ubuntu’s package lists to see if there’s anything else you’d like (e.g. thonny for learning to program: Thonny 4 contains a pro-Ukraine message that might get you in trouble in some countries, but Ubuntu 22.04 LTS still uses Thonny 3.3).
You may also want sudo apt install swapspace if you didn’t create a swap partition from the installer and don’t have much RAM.
For Chinese pinyin input, sudo apt install ibus-pinyin (add Cangjie via ibus-cangjie and its HK variant ibus-table-quick), put run_im ibus into .xinputrc (or run im-config to do it), and set Preferences / LXQt settings / Session Settings / Autostart / Add / Command sh -c "while true; do ibus-daemon -rx; sleep 1; done" (and run Preferences / IBus Preferences to add input methods)

What about even older computers?

Most ‘consumer’ PCs sold since early 2007 (when Vista was new) can read DVDs and run 64-bit code. If your computer is older than that (e.g. Windows XP era) then I suggest using the old wattOS-LXDE R9 CD-ROM image and upgrading after installation. It also works from USB via UNetbootin etc.

On old Pentium M machines you might need the forcepae boot option. On newer machines you might need to disable “Secure boot” in the BIOS.
If WiFi doesn’t work, try Preferences / Additional Drivers and see what package it needs. If you don’t have a wired Internet connection to install these, you’ll have to open a Terminal and do apt-get -y --print-uris bcmwl-kernel-source or similar, possibly correct the resulting URLs (e.g. linux-libc-dev is now in the security updates section of Ubuntu 14.04) and bring them on storage media.
If the @ and " keys are swapped (and if this bothers the user), try sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
Upgrade is recommended for online use: R9 was based on Ubuntu 14.04 which lost support from the security team in 2019; it can be upgraded to 16.04 (which was supported until April 2021), and from there to 18.04 (which was supported until May 2023) although 18.04 did drop some early “586” CPUs like the Cyrix III that may have ran Windows XP. Unsupported GNU/Linux versions are not ideal, but they’re still more secure than the unsupported Windows versions they replace.

1. As root, type do-release-upgrade to reach 16.04

2. apt-get install lxsession-logout linux-generic-hwe-16.04 to avoid 16.04’s “hung shutdown” bug associated with kernel version 4.4.0

3. Type do-release-upgrade again to reach 18.04, in which case you might also need apt-get remove resolvconf

Some users might also want brasero for writing CDs, wine for running legacy Windows applications, and libreoffice (if it crashes try turning off Java in its Preferences, and install myspell-en-gb for British spelling). Also vlc for playing videos (and doing this from inside Firefox may require ubuntu-restricted-extras; on 16.04 you can also try libdvd-pkg for playing commercial DVDs).
For Chinese fonts, sudo apt-get install fonts-wqy-microhei; pinyin input can be added as above (although the LXQt setting is not needed on R9, 16.04 or 18.04), or for limited single-character handwriting input, sudo apt-get install tegaki-recognize tegaki-zinnia-simplified-chinese and add it as an icon on the application launcher
LaTeX users beware: Do not install the texlive-full package if the user is likely to paste Traditional Chinese into LibreOffice. When such pastes occur, LibreOffice looks for the first Chinese font listed, which will be Arphic Simplified if TexLive installed that under ‘A’—but the system fails to select the matching Arphic Traditional font for characters not present in Simplified, instead rendering these in a *non-matching* font which uglifies printouts. So if you do leave TeXLive on the machine, I suggest uninstalling its Arphic fonts if the user won’t be coding for old-style CJK-LaTeX. (If they *will* use CJK-LaTeX *and* paste Traditional Chinese into LibreOffice then you might just have to tell them to correct LibreOffice’s font choice after every paste.)
Developers: if you have a 64-bit CPU and want to compile for it (or if you want to run Zoom, which started to require 64-bit after version 5.4), try:

dpkg --add-architecture amd64

apt-get update

apt-get install linux-image-generic:amd64

reboot

apt-get install gcc:amd64 cpp:amd64 gdb:amd64

If you’ve upgraded to 16.04, you will likely also need linux-generic-hwe-16.04:amd64 gcc:amd64 cpp:amd64 gcc-5:amd64 cpp-5:amd64 binutils:amd64 g++:amd64 g++-5:amd64 lxrandr:amd64 x11-xserver-utils:amd64 which in 16.04 is somehow incompatible with libtool (frequently required by autogen.sh files in source packages) so you might need temporarily to switch back to a 32-bit-only compilation environment in those circumstances, or use conan.io etc instead of autogen.

If you’ve upgraded to 18.04, you might see an error message from iucode_tool updating initramfs—this does *not* mean your system is unbootable. The system should still boot without the microcode updater, and it can be restored when the initramfs is updated after next boot.

To upgrade the *entire system* to 64-bit, by far the easiest way is a fresh install: the Lubuntu 20.04 installer (which requires 64-bit) has an option to resize your existing partition and install alongside, which might help with the migration (but backup anyway just in case). The move from LXDE to LXQt may require some manual setup.

What if I don’t want to install GNU/Linux?

Well there is another alternative system called BSD (a version called “GhostBSD” is fairly beginner-friendly), but if you don’t want to leave Windows *at all* then you will likely need a new computer if you wish to continue to use the Internet. Your old computer can perhaps be put to good use by someone who doesn’t use the Internet, or by a trustworthy GNU/Linux expert (I say ‘trustworthy’ because they can sometimes recover confidential things you thought you’d deleted). For new equipment, I suggest a Raspberry Pi 400 which comes with GNU/Linux preinstalled; you might need something more substantial, but it should still be possible to avoid Windows.

Legal

All material © Silas S. Brown unless otherwise stated. Firefox is a registered trademark of The Mozilla Foundation. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation in the US and possibly other countries. Javascript is a trademark of Oracle Corporation in the US. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. TeX is a trademark of the American Mathematical Society. Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Zoom is a trademark of Zoom Video Communications, Inc. Any other trademarks I mentioned without realising are trademarks of their respective holders.